US Accuses Russia in Hack of Pentagon Computer Network

Local Editor

US military officials said Thursday that they suspect Russian hackers infiltrated an unclassified Pentagon email system used by employees of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the latest in a series of state-sponsored attacks on sensitive US government computer networks.

The electronic intrusion was detected around July 25, officials said. The Pentagon immediately disabled the email system, which is used by about 4,000 military and civilian personnel, in an attempt to contain the damage. The network remains offline, though officials said they hoped to restart it in the coming days.

The Defense Department disclosed the existence of the attack shortly after it occurred, but only in recent days had investigators traced it to Russia. Officials said the complexity and advanced nature of the hack strongly suggested that a foreign government was responsible.

"This attack was fairly sophisticated and has the indications . . . of having come from a state actor such as Russia," said a US official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of the investigation.

The cyberattack on the Joint Staff, which coordinates operations among the branches of the armed forces, is similar in many ways to one last fall that successfully penetrated unclassified email systems at the White House and the State Department. In that case, US officials said the trail also led to hackers believed to be working for the Russian government.

Even so, officials cautioned that it is difficult to pinpoint the origin or perpetrator of such hacks. "Attribution in this business in near impossible. Rarely are you ever able to say with 100 percent certainty" who was behind a particular incident, the official said.

The incident follows several other more destructive cyberattacks on US government networks, including devastating breaches of databases maintained by the Office of Personnel Management. US officials believe hackers working for the Chinese government were responsible for those, which exposed sensitive information about more than 22 million people.

Responding to the spate of attacks, officials in Washington have said they were working to bolster the security of computer systems across the federal government. The disclosure of a successful breach of a Pentagon email network, however, is likely to generate new scrutiny from Congress on the reliability of Washington's cyber defenses.

Furthermore, US officials indicated that the hackers penetrated the Joint Staff network with an old-fashioned technique known as "spear-phishing," which relies on unsuspecting email users to click on links infected with malware.

Russia's intelligence agencies are also suspected of masterminding a successful attack on US military classified networks that was discovered in 2008 and took months to contain.

The Obama administration has been reluctant to formally blame the Russian or Chinese governments for the recent cyberattacks or offer hard evidence of their involvement, reasoning that to do so could inadvertently reveal details about US cyber defenses.

Moreover, the US government operates its own cyberespionage campaigns against other countries, so publicly pointing the finger at other countries could be seen as hypocritical.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team